Harry van der Kamp
Encyclopedia
Harry van der Kamp is a Dutch bass singer in opera and concert.
. Then he studied singing with Elizabeth Cooymans and Max van Egmond
at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory
.
He has worked mainly in Early music
and Baroque
, including Baroque opera of composers such as Francesco Cavalli
, Stefano Landi
, Antonio Cesti
, Henry Purcell
, Jean-Philippe Rameau
, Reinhard Keiser
and George Frideric Handel
. He sang with the Nederlandse Opera in Monteverdi's operas L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea
, and also in Reves d'un Marco Polo of Claude Vivier
. Bernard Holland
described his appearance in 1996 as Zoroastro in Handel's Orlando
with Les Arts Florissants
, conducted by William Christie
, in the New York Times: "Harry van der Kamp is the only man, managing Zoroastro's bass arias with pleasing clarity and heft."
He recorded several Bach cantata
s and the Mass in B minor with Gustav Leonhardt
. On a recording of Bach's St John Passion with Sigiswald Kuijken
he appeared together with his teacher Max van Egmond and Christoph Prégardien
as the Evangelist
. In 1996 he recorded Bach's St Matthew Passion with Frans Brüggen
and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in a live performance in the Vredenburg (castle), together with Nico van der Meel (Evangelist), Kristinn Sigmundsson
(Jesus), María Cristina Kiehr
, Ian Bostridge
and Peter Kooy
, among others. He performed regularly with the choir junge kantorei in Eberbach Abbey
, in Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in 1978, in Handel's Messiah
in 1979, in Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1981 and 1985, and in his Mass in B minor in 1983.
He has worked with such ensembles as the Hilliard Ensemble
, Musica Antiqua Köln
or Les Arts Florissants
. With the Huelgas Ensemble
he recorded works of Matteo da Perugia
.
In 1984 he founded the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam to perform madrigals of the 16th and 17th century, of composers such as Carlo Gesualdo
, Emilio de' Cavalieri
and Scipione Lacorcia
, and also music of the 20th century.
Van der Kamp and the Gesualdo Consort completed Het Sweelinck Monument, a first complete recording of the vocal works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
on 17CDs in October 2010. The recording was awarded the "Klassieke Muziekprijs 2010". Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present at the commemorative event at the Oude Kerk van Amsterdam on 20 October 2010, and Van der Kamp was created Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw.
. He has been teaching at the Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein.
Singing career
Van der Kamp studied first law and psychology in AmsterdamAmsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
. Then he studied singing with Elizabeth Cooymans and Max van Egmond
Max van Egmond
Max van Egmond is a Dutch bass and baritone singer. He has focused on oratorio and Lied and is known for singing works of Johann Sebastian Bach.- Professional career :...
at the Amsterdam Sweelinck Conservatory
Conservatorium van Amsterdam
The Conservatorium van Amsterdam is a Dutch academy of music located in Amsterdam. This school is the music division of the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, the city's vocational university of arts...
.
He has worked mainly in Early music
Early music
Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...
and Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
, including Baroque opera of composers such as Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli was an Italian composer of the early Baroque period. His real name was Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni, but he is better known by that of Cavalli, the name of his patron Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman.-Life:Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy...
, Stefano Landi
Stefano Landi
Stefano Landi was an Italian composer and teacher of the early Baroque Roman School. He was an influential early composer of opera, and wrote the earliest opera on a historical subject: Sant'Alessio .-Biography:Landi was born in Rome, the capital of the Papal States.In 1595 he joined the Collegio...
, Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti
Antonio Cesti , known today primarily as an Italian composer of the Baroque era, he was also a singer , and organist. He was "the most celebrated Italian musician of his generation".- Biography :...
, Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
, Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...
, Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser
Reinhard Keiser was a popular German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas, and in 1745 Johann Adolph Scheibe considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann , but his work was largely forgotten for many...
and George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
. He sang with the Nederlandse Opera in Monteverdi's operas L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian baroque opera comprising a prologue and three acts, first performed in Venice during the 1642–43 carnival season. The music, attributed to Claudio Monteverdi, is a setting of a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello...
, and also in Reves d'un Marco Polo of Claude Vivier
Claude Vivier
-Biography:Born to unknown parents in Montreal, Vivier was adopted at the age of three by a poor French-Canadian family. From the age of thirteen, he attended boarding schools run by the Marist Brothers, a religious order that prepared young boys for a vocation in the priesthood. At the age of...
. Bernard Holland
Bernard Holland
Bernard Holland is an internationally recognized American music critic. He served on the staff of The New York Times from 1981 until 2008 and held the post of chief music critic from 1995, contributing 4,575 articles to the newspaper....
described his appearance in 1996 as Zoroastro in Handel's Orlando
Orlando (opera)
Orlando is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the Royal Academy of Music . The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's L'Orlando after Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which was also the source of Handel's operas Alcina and...
with Les Arts Florissants
Les Arts Florissants (ensemble)
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra...
, conducted by William Christie
William Christie (musician)
William Lincoln Christie is an American-born French conductor and harpsichordist. He is noted as a specialist in baroque repertoire and as the founder of the ensemble Les Arts Florissants....
, in the New York Times: "Harry van der Kamp is the only man, managing Zoroastro's bass arias with pleasing clarity and heft."
He recorded several Bach cantata
Bach cantata
Bach cantata became a term for a cantata of the German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach who was a prolific writer of the genre. Although many of his works are lost, around 200 cantatas survived....
s and the Mass in B minor with Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt
Gustav Leonhardt is a highly renowned Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. Leonhardt has been a leading figure in the movement to perform music on period instruments...
. On a recording of Bach's St John Passion with Sigiswald Kuijken
Sigiswald Kuijken
Sigiswald Kuijken is a Belgian violinist, violist, and conductor known for playing on authentic instruments.-Biography:Kuijken was born in Dilbeek, near Brussels. He was a member of the Alarius Ensemble of Brussels between 1964 and 1972 and formed La Petite Bande in 1972...
he appeared together with his teacher Max van Egmond and Christoph Prégardien
Christoph Prégardien
Christoph Prégardien is a German lyric tenor whose career is closely associated with the roles in Mozart operas, as well as performances of Lieder, oratorio roles, and Baroque music...
as the Evangelist
Evangelist (Bach)
The Evangelist in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach is the tenor part in his oratorios and Passions who narrates the exact words of the Bible, translated by Martin Luther, in recitative, namely in the works St John Passion, St Matthew Passion, and the Christmas Oratorio, also in the St Mark...
. In 1996 he recorded Bach's St Matthew Passion with Frans Brüggen
Frans Brüggen
Frans Brüggen is a well-known Dutch conductor, recorder player and baroque flautist.-Biography:Brüggen studied recorder and flute at the Amsterdam Muzieklyceum. He also studied musicology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1955, at the age of 21, he was appointed professor at the Royal...
and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century in a live performance in the Vredenburg (castle), together with Nico van der Meel (Evangelist), Kristinn Sigmundsson
Kristinn Sigmundsson
Kristinn Sigmundsson is an Icelandic foremost bass opera singer with an international career. He studied biology at the University of Iceland and worked for some time as a teacher before commencing his song studies under Guðmundur Jónsson at the Reykjavik Academy of Singing.Later, he studied at...
(Jesus), María Cristina Kiehr
Maria Cristina Kiehr
María Cristina Kiehr is a soprano vocalist associated with Baroque music. After receiving her early musical training in Argentina, she moved in 1983 to Europe and studied under René Jacobs at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, specializing in the Baroque repertoire. She performs and records for the...
, Ian Bostridge
Ian Bostridge
Ian Bostridge CBE is an English tenor, well known for his performances as an opera singer and as a song recitalist.-Early life and education:...
and Peter Kooy
Peter Kooy
Peter Kooy is a Dutch bass singer specialized in baroque music.- Biography :Peter Kooy started his musical career at 6 years as a choir boy. However he started his musical studies as a violin student...
, among others. He performed regularly with the choir junge kantorei in Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey
Eberbach Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery near Eltville am Rhein in the Rheingau, Germany. On account of its impressive Romanesque and early Gothic buildings it is considered one of the most significant architectural heritage sites in Hesse, Germany...
, in Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine in 1978, in Handel's Messiah
Messiah (Handel)
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel, with a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later...
in 1979, in Bach's St. Matthew Passion in 1981 and 1985, and in his Mass in B minor in 1983.
He has worked with such ensembles as the Hilliard Ensemble
Hilliard Ensemble
The Hilliard Ensemble is a British male vocal quartet originally devoted to the performance of early music. Founded in 1974, the group is named after the Elizabethan miniaturist painter Nicholas Hilliard....
, Musica Antiqua Köln
Musica Antiqua Köln
Musica Antiqua Köln was an early music group that was founded in 1973 by Reinhard Goebel and fellow students from the Conservatory of Music in Cologne. Musica Antiqua Köln devoted itself largely to the performance of the music of the 17th and 18th centuries...
or Les Arts Florissants
Les Arts Florissants (ensemble)
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra...
. With the Huelgas Ensemble
Huelgas Ensemble
The Huelgas Ensemble is a Belgian early music group formed by the Flemish conductor Paul Van Nevel in 1971. The group's performance and extensive discography focuses on renaissance polyphony...
he recorded works of Matteo da Perugia
Matteo da Perugia
Matteo da Perugia was a Medieval Italian composer, presumably from Perugia. From 1402 to 1407 he was the first magister cappellae of the Milan Cathedral; his duties included being cantor and teaching three boys selected by the Cathedral deputies. Little is known about his life apart from this...
.
In 1984 he founded the Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam to perform madrigals of the 16th and 17th century, of composers such as Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo
Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo di Venosa or Gesualdo da Venosa , Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian nobleman, lutenist, composer, and murderer....
, Emilio de' Cavalieri
Emilio de' Cavalieri
Emilio de' Cavalieri was an Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer at the end of the Renaissance era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome, Florence and Venice, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque era...
and Scipione Lacorcia
Scipione Lacorcia
Scipione Lacorcia was a Neapolitan composer of madrigals.Biographical data for Scipione Lacorcia is almost non-existent. Apart from his activity 1590-1620, culminating in his third book of madrigals for 5 voices, little is known....
, and also music of the 20th century.
Van der Kamp and the Gesualdo Consort completed Het Sweelinck Monument, a first complete recording of the vocal works of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and his work as a teacher helped establish the north German organ...
on 17CDs in October 2010. The recording was awarded the "Klassieke Muziekprijs 2010". Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands was present at the commemorative event at the Oude Kerk van Amsterdam on 20 October 2010, and Van der Kamp was created Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw.
Teaching career
In 1994 Harry van der Kamp was appointed professor at the Hochschule für Künste BremenUniversity of the Arts Bremen
The University of the Arts Bremen is a publicly funded university in Bremen, Germany and one of the most successful ones whose roots in music, arts and design date back to 1873...
. He has been teaching at the Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein.
External links
- Harry van der Kamp on Haydn Festival Eisenstadt
- Entries for recordings by Harry van der Kamp on WorldCatWorldCatWorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...